Microsoft knocks Instant Search

Satya Nadella, senior vice president for R&D with Microsoft's Online Services Division said that Google Instant got in the way of users and that reactions to it have been "mixed at best." Google Instant displays search results immediately when a user starts typing a query, and updates them in real time as additional letters are added.

Nadella said that while Microsoft was studying Google Instant its own tests indicate that users did not like to have results flashed up on the screen when you don't expect them. Microsoft said that it had a kind of instant search for some queries, such as when a user types "weather" and the first few letters of a city as well as the weather for the city Bing thinks the user is looking for pop up in a box.